MESSIAEN'S HARAWI / 10th Singapore Lieder Festival / Sing Song Club

MESSIAEN’S HARAWI

10^th Singapore Lieder Festival

Sing Song Club

Victoria Concert Hall 

Dance Studio

Wednesday (24 August 2022)

 

The Singapore Lieder Festival, named in these pages as the nation’s best kept secret, made a comeback for its 10^th edition with a single-night event. The Sing Song Club gave the Singapore premiere of twentieth-century French composer Olivier Messiaen’s song-cycle Harawi (1945), part of his love-and-death trilogy inspired by the legend of Tristan and Isolde. The two other parts include the massive Turangalila Symphony, performed by the SSO in 1994 and 2017, and the choral Cinq Rechants, which has yet to receive its premiere here.

  

 

Harawi comprises 12 songs in French (written by Messiaen himself), based on Peruvian Quetcha poetry, music and folklore on the said subject of love and death. The songs were shared by tenor Adrian Poon and soprano Jennifer Lien, partnered by Singapore’s very own Graham Johnson, the intrepid pianist Shane Thio. The music bears similarities with Turangalila albeit on a smaller scale, with its shared musical idioms of violent dissonances and paradoxically comforting harmonies, and by its use of recurring themes.

 

Birdsong abounds, notably the green dove (colombe verte) representing the forbidden love between protagonists Piroutcha and Toungou. Their eternal love can only be truly consummated in death, by the latter’s decapitation amid cosmic levels of upheavals. Erotic and gory in equal measure, this was what made Harawi the cult favourite it is. While Turangalila was the extroverted crowd pleaser, Harawi was the introverted sleeper of Messaien acolytes.

 

Both singers were excellent and well-matched in their selected songs, reflecting a kind of yin and yang in opposing yet complementary viewpoints. Poon was the grounded terrestrial spirit of sleeping cities (La ville qui dormant), mountains (Montagnes) and the realm of animals (monkeys and the ubiquitous birds) while Lien revelled in the mystic ideals, love (L’amour de Piroutcha), parting (Adieu) and celestial forces, the sun (L’escalier edit, gestes de soleil) and stars (Katchokatchi les etolies). Both conveyed the outward ruggedness and inner beauty of the music very convincingly.

Doundou tchil,
now repeat it 19 more times...

 

Besides singing in idiomatic French, repetitive onomatopoeic words also stole the show, such as the recurring doundou tchil and katchikatchi sung by Lien (representing a dance with ankle bells and grasshoppers respectively), and Poon’s shrieking cries of ahi and o (Repetition planetaire) as well as the monosyllabic pia (Syllables). Their synchronisation with Thio’s dynamic pianism in these rhythmically complex and extremely tricky numbers were a marvel to behold from start to end.

Ahi...ahi....O....
(Repetition planetaire)

 

Held in the high-ceilinged and mirrored space of Victoria Concert Hall’s Dance Studio, with its sonorous and not-too-reverberant acoustics, the performance was very well received by a small but extremely appreciative audience. The floor sprinkled with multi-coloured origami pieces (possibly celebrating the recent repeal of 377A) representing birds, grasshoppers and stars made a very nice and atmospheric touch for a landmark in Singapore music history.

 

Whence will the next performance of Harawi take place? Given that Messiaen’s Quatour pour le fin du temps and Turangalila, Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, Bernstein’s Mass, Wagner’s Walkure, and the complete melodies of Debussy, Ravel and Poulenc (thanks also to Sing Song Club) are no longer strangers to Singapore audiences, one can hazard to say that cannot be too long from now, and coming from yet another adventurous group of musicians. Yes, a revolution of sorts has begun.

MESSIAEN TURANGALILA / Singapore Symphony Orchestra / Review

MESSIAEN TURANGALILA

Singapore Symphony Orchestra

Esplanade Concert Hall

Saturday (1 April 2017)

This review was published in The Straits Times on 3 April 2017 with the title "Exploring yin and yang".

There are some works of music that get heard here maybe once in a lifetime. Britten's War Requiem, Walton's Belshazzar's Feast and MacMillan's Seven Last Words come to mind. Rare as it may seem, Olivier Messiaen's massive Turangalila-Symphony featured on a Singapore Symphony Orchestra programme for only the second time.

Followers of the orchestra will remember the pair of performances conducted by Choo Hoey at Victoria Concert Hall in 1994. How those even got off the ground considering the orchestra's relative youth and that venue's small stage was a marvel. No such problems arose in Esplanade this time, with over a hundred musicians (including 10 percussionists) led by Shui Lan fitting comfortably onstage, and the vast auditorium to absorb its outsized sonic demands.

Comprising ten movements and playing for 75 minutes, Turangalila (composed in 1946-48) is an anomaly never to be repeated without the charge of plagiarism. Its title comes from Sanskrit words connoting rapid movement and life force. This was the French composer's grand conception of universal love, encompassing sacred, profane and carnal varieties. Often considered his most vulgar work, it is also his most popular.

These contradictions are reflected in its major themes, the monstrous and terrifying “Statue theme” brayed by the brass, contrasted by a soft and slender “Flower theme” heard on two clarinets. Recurring and balancing opposites, these represented masculine and feminine, essentially the work's yin and yang.

The same may refer to the soloists, pianist Andreas Haefliger's stentorian chords, lancinating trills and intoxicated cadenzas as opposed to Cynthia Millar's freewheeling on the Ondes Martenot. The latter is an electronic instrument, precursor of the synthesiser, producing tones from bass rumbles to high-pitched whistling, whining and glissandi in between. Both were excellent, and excellently supported by the orchestra.

The imposing opening was dominated by the “Statue theme”, its almighty strides conjuring a sense of dread which the “Flower theme” did little to dispel. Despite loud and deafening pages, there were also isolated oases of calm and reflection, often created by a few instruments. The deft use of percussion and unlikely combos (such as bassoon with piccolo) evoked Eastern mysticism, reflecting Messiaen's ecumenical spiritual worldview.

The 5^th and 6^th movements were the heart and contrasted centrepieces of the work. The unfettered outburts of frenzied sexual ecstasy in Joy Of The Blood Of Stars (almost a Karma Sutra set to music) could only be followed by the detumescence and quiet bliss of Garden Of Love's Sleep, where the indolent “Love theme” is introduced. At its serene end, one was left with a lingering echo of the Onde Martenot's last note.

By the 8^th movement, the mighty “Statue theme” had been vanquished, toppling into an abyss according to Haefliger's preamble. Replacing it in the joyous finale was a glorious preroration of the “Love theme”, hammered out by the entire orchestra. In the arduous journey of life, the greatest of all is love. Judging by the rapturous applause after the overwrought and terrific performance, Messiaen's message had been well received.